Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, and Other Volcanos

William, Sir Hamilton and Thomas Cadell

Sir William Hamilton lived beneath Vesuvius and could not look away. In these letters he reports eruption after eruption from Naples, describing lava, ash and the shuddering ground with a diplomat's precision. Firsthand volcanology from the eighteenth century. Stand at the crater's edge with a man who watched the mountains burn.